Archive for Pharma & Life Sciences
My ARC colleague Janice Abel told me a story recently that is making me question the safety and efficacy of prescription drugs purchased online.
Janice was visiting her stepfather who had been away from home for a long weekend. When he returned and went out to the mailbox, on a hot summer day in the 90s, he saw that his diabetes medicine had arrived, but the ice pack in… Continue reading
An Asian Supply Chain Success Story
· CommentsOnce upon a time there was a global, medical products company that was very unhappy with the way it was treating its customers in Asia. The company’s main customers are hospitals that use its products in emergency room surgeries. Not surprisingly, its customers wanted a high level of product availability. But this was a problem because the company’s factories are primarily located in North America and Europe, even though Asia… Continue reading
“The arrival of swine flu in the United States exposed gaps in the supply chain that delivers medication, masks, and even testing swabs to hospitals and doctors’ offices – shortcomings that could prove vastly more worrisome if a deadlier strain returns in the fall, officials say.”
So begins an article published this week in The Boston Globe by Stephen Smith. Although the U.S. health system responded very well… Continue reading
In medicine, researchers often study people who don’t get sick after getting exposed to an otherwise deadly virus to understand what enables their immunity, which can accelerate the development of a successful vaccine. Similarly, when it comes to logistics outsourcing, it’s sometimes useful to study the outliers to get a different perspective on what’s happening in the industry.
I use the medicine analogy because the “outlier” I’m focusing on… Continue reading
The first time I wrote about trade security was in late 2002 (“Trade Security: A Wildcard in Supply Chain Management”). This was about a year after 9/11, when various security initiatives were first launched, including Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), the Container Security Initiative (CSI), Operation Safe Commerce (OSC), and Smart and Secure Trade Lanes (SST). A couple of years later, I wrote “Linking Supply Chain Security
